BUENOS AIRES, (Reuters) – Backed by unprecedented funding, Argentina can sow seeds of Olympic success in London this year looking to reap the rewards at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016, the government’s Sports Secretary Claudio Morresi told Reuters.
Morresi, a former Huracan and River Plate first division soccer player, heads up the national high performance athletics body ENARD which digs out and nurtures talent that might otherwise go uncovered.
“The generation of youngsters coming up, with preparation, continuity of support and chances of international competition, they’re going to have better performances in the quest for medals at the (Rio) Games of 2016,” Morresi said.
“Our task more than anything is to make it possible that our sportsmen and women can get to the Games in the best way,” he told Reuters in an interview at CENARD, the high performance centre on the edge of the capital.
“That they should have been able to exploit their full potential and that’s what we’re managing today … Our teams go to compete with all their needs sorted out in great measure,” he said in an office with a view of the giant River Plate stadium half a kilometre away.
Morresi said that under the government that has been in power since 2003, the (sports) budget had increased 1,200 per cent with ENARD run jointly by the Sports Secretariat and the (National) Olympic Committee.
ENARD is giving grants to 1,600 athletes, ranging from 6,600 Argentine pesos ($1,500) per month for the elite to 600 pesos for up-and-coming performers.
“(But) the medals table isn’t something that determines the progress of a society in relation to sport,” Morresi said when confronted with the fact that Argentina has a small medals haul in more than a century of Games.
This had to do with which sports most Argentines practise as well as the financial difficulties traditionally faced by athletes in individual disciplines.
Argentina has been strong in team sports, winning the last two gold medals in men’s soccer, and also medals at the last two games in men’s basketball, including gold in Athens in 2004, and women’s hockey, whose team go to London as reigning world champions.
The country has past performers to look to following several successes at the 1948 Games, the last time they were held in London, where Argentina won gold in the marathon and two boxing weights and seven medals altogether.
TEAM SUCCESSES
“Maybe Argentina doesn’t have many in sports where a lot of medals are awarded, like athletics, swimming, gymnastics, nor a biotype in some cases like sprints,” Morresi said.
“Argentina has good results where its people have massive participation, football, basketball, women’s hockey,” he said, pointing out that more and more girls are flocking to hockey clubs on the back of the international successes of Las Leonas (lionesses).
“Nonetheless, in all the time we’ve been at the helm we’ve worked to be able to develop some disciplines, for instance wrestling. Argentina didn’t have any South American involvement in wrestling and today we’re going to take representatives to the Olympic Games, likewise in other fighting disciplines like judo, taekwondo.
“And there’s another factor which is that we’ve maybe learnt not to give too much importance to getting medals,” said Morresi, whose older brother was kidnapped during the 1976-83 military dictatorship when he was 13 and was among the “disappeared” for 13 years before being found dead.
“The wounds are closed with justice,” said Morresi, who will be 50 on April 30, referring to the trials for the crimes committed by the military regime after the country returned to democracy.
That military regime invaded the British-held Falkland Islands which Argentina claims and calls Las Malvinas in the South Atlantic sparking a short war in 1982. The present democratic government has raised the issue of sovereignty again this anniversary year.
Morresi, denying Argentina would try to take political profit from the presence of their best athletes in London, said: “The Argentine delegation will travel to London with the conviction in their minds and hearts that the Malvinas are Argentine but all they will be going to London to do is take part in the sporting event.”
